church of Santa Fosca at Torcello, San Giacomo di Rialto at Venice, and
the crypt of St. Mark's, forms a distinct group of buildings, in which
the Byzantine influence is exceedingly slight; and which is probably
very sufficiently representative of the earliest architecture on the
islands.

SECTION XXXI. The Ducal residence was removed to Venice in 809, and the
body of St. Mark was brought from Alexandria twenty years later. The
first church of St. Mark's was, doubtless, built in imitation of that
destroyed at Alexandria, and from which the relics of the saint had been
obtained. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the
architecture of Venice seems to have been formed on the same model, and
is almost identical with that of Cairo under the caliphs, [Footnote:
Appendix 10, "Church of Alexandria."] it being quite immaterial whether
the reader chooses to call both Byzantine or both Arabic; the workmen
being certainly Byzantine, but forced to the invention of new forms by
their Arabian masters, and bringing these forms into use in whatever
other parts of the world they were employed.

To this first manner of Venetian architecture, together with such
vestiges as remain of the Christian Roman, I shall devote the first
division of the following inquiry. The examples remaining of it consist
of three noble churches (those of Torcello, Murano, and the greater part
of St. Mark's), and about ten or twelve fragments of palaces.

SECTION XXXII. To this style succeeds a transitional one, of a character
much more distinctly Arabian: the shafts become more slender, and the
arches consistently pointed, instead of round; certain other changes,
not to be enumerated in a sentence, taking place in the capitals and
mouldings. This style is almost exclusively secular. It was natural for